From the archives: Iran in the 1960s - in pictures

From the archives: Iran in the 1960s - in pictures

The march toward modernity coincided with Ayatollah Khomeini’s exile to Najaf in 1964, and the assassination of the secular prime minister Hassan Ali Mansour just a few months later. Meanwhile foreign firms, especially American ones, poured into the country. And for a period until the beginning of the revolution in 1978, the old and new coexisted in seeming harmony

A young woman standing in front of one of the first mass housing complexes in Tehran in the 1960s. Then a symbol of modern living in Iran, its aesthetic clashed with the traditional sensibilities of a neighbouring village, prompting a cleric there to decree the land on which Shahreziba (beautiful city) was built unholy for prayer.